mikethemadbiologist

In all the recounting of Jerry Falwell's life, almost all of the focus has been on Falwell's 'religiously' motivated positions. But this ignores Falwell's first political activity: to defend the system of American apartheid known as segregation. Racism, not abortion or other 'religious' issues,…

So asks Oliver Willis about the Republican base: As I've noted before, I don't have a really strong position on immigration reform. As the child of immigrants who came here the legit way, I'm troubled by giving a pass of any sort to people who "cut" in line, but I also know it's kind of dumb to…

So Lou Dobbs has been making ludicrous statements about leprosy and illegal immigrants, claiming that 7,000 cases have happened in the last few years as a result of illegal immigration. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote Dobbs a letter: Actually, we have had 7,000 cases of leprosy--over a…

Or at least know what magical brownies can do to you:

(from here) Biologists have studied the fly Drosophila melanogaster for decades. Given its status as a model organism (perhaps the model organism), one would think figuring out what its microbial fauna is would be a high priority. Yet remarkably little is known about its microbial fauna. Until…

Researchers at the University of Tennessee have an online survey about blogging and political information. Help these good people out and take the survey.

Biologist Lewis Wolpert talks about memes: What about Daniel Dennett's idea that religion is a kind of "meme" -- an idea that has infected human cultures and keeps on spreading? If you could tell me what a meme is, and how useful it is, I'd be very grateful. [Laughs] Please don't misunderstand, I'…

Last night, the Republican presidential candidates were asked what they would do in a "24" situation. Intelligent Designer help us, but McCain (and Paul) were the only sane ones. McCain noted that the "24" scenario is ridiculous. He also pointed out that torture causes us to lose our moral…

Let's leave aside decency and morality and try to forget that Romney eliminated funding for a gay teen suicide hotline to curry favor with the theopolitical Right. Let's not plumb the dark, foul abyss that is Mitt Romney's soul. Let's not ask how morally decrepit one would have to be to attempt…

The 'godly' singing "The Old Rugged Cross." Or something The last thing most people in the Coalition of the Sane want when they are being treated for a serious illness in the hospital to have the staff try to convert you to another religion. And when you force a sick patient to choose between…

As regular readers of this blog* know, I'm not particularly fond of the 'progressive' netroots, largely because I don't know what they stand for, and what little I do know doesn't strike me as particularly compelling. Over at MaxSpeak, there's an excellent take on the netroots, which includes some…

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has posted of all of the articles from In the light of evolution I: Adaptation and complex design . It looks pretty interesting. And it's free! I can't wait to see how the creationists bollox this up...

And by "it", I don't mean the good stuff. Harvard dean Theda Skocpol has announced a new initiative to improve undergraduate teaching at Harvard. I'll believe it when I see it--which means it will never happen. Here's why. The short version is that every year (give or take), some prestigious…

By way of Oliver Willis, I stumbled across these outtakes from the movie Flock of Dodos. I will never stop being amazed by the disingenuousness of the ID movement:

Well, that isn't what Ezra Klein titled his post about blogospheric venom, but he should have. Klein writes (italics mine): ...part of the problem with blogospheric civility is that bloggers aren't addressing their posts to folks like Hiatt. They're writing for an imagined audience composed mainly…

A special edition of Sunday links. Last week, I asked non-science bloggers to post five links that had something to do with science. So, I'll start by returning the linky love: (The list is in no particular order. Wouldn't want to play favorites...): Tai Haku has a list. The Ridger has a list.…

Pundits discuss Democratic candidates The mainstream media has a double standard for Democratic candidates. INCONCEIVABLE! Jameson Foser writes (italics mine): Cavuto suggests it's hypocritical for Edwards, a wealthy man, to want to eradicate poverty. That is essentially what Beck and Cafferty…

One of the odd ideas to have arisen is that one can have a good idea, but not express it well. With rare exceptions, in my experience, that isn't the case: poorly communicated ideas are usually a result of poor ideas. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of former…

I'm limiting this to the U.S. (my apologies). Do you think one time zone has an advantage in blogging over another? Is there an advantage to 'getting off the mark early' (i.e., Eastern Standard Time) or getting 'last licks' (PST)? What do you think?

Well, that got your attention, didn't it? Actually, I'm referring to a post by PZ where he discusses his objections to religion. In reading them, they really didn't seem to describe my religion, so I thought it would be interesting to go through them. For background, I guess I'm a…

...and a symphony broke out? Who starts a fight at the Boston Pops? From the Globe: One of the two concertgoers at the center of what has become known as "The Brawl at Symphony Hall" said yesterday that he intends to press charges against the man who punched him after being asked several times…

More scary food news from China: Chinese catfish have been found to contain fluoroquinolone residues. Fluoroquinolones are medically important antibiotics and include ciprofloxacin ("Cipro") and enrofloxacin (which has been banned from agricultural use in the U.S.). Not only can fluoroquinolones…

Remember the old joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged? By way of Ed Brayton, I came across this post by Kent Hovind about his time in jail. Both the post and some of the responses are fascinating (in a 'car wreck' sort of way) because they illuminate the authoritarian mind so…

Tristero makes an excellent point about Republican rhetoric, and I think it partially explains why so many scientists are opposed to the Bush Administration. Tristero compares the Niger 'evidence' for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the rhetoric opposing the HPV vaccination (italics mine…

Tragically, Massachusetts is having a hepatitis C outbreak, and it's entirely due to surging heroin use: The spike in hepatitis C, an illness most often spread by drug needles tainted with the virus, emerges during a period of epidemic heroin use in Massachusetts. That is almost certainly no…

Senator Obama earned a lot of points in my book today because he took the leadership of the U.S. auto companies to task for being such retrograde, anti-progress morons. From the NY Times (italics mine): In a speech that hit hard at the failings of Detroit automakers, Mr. Obama, a Democratic…

Or socialist. Or maybe just Swedish. By way of Ezra Klein, I came across these polling data collected by Ruy Teixeira: If you hold both of these views (and arguably, even just one), you are an economic liberal. Not a moderate, but a liberal. I realize many people don't want to be called…

When rightwing CNN host Glenn Beck went Full Metal Godwin on Al Gore, I figured this was just garden-variety rightwing agitprop. But this post at Slacktivist about the "Left Behind" apocalyptic book series, by way of ScienceBlogling Josh, convinces me that Beck is just a flat out nutjob. From an…

I've made this point before: when you use the National Guard as a backdoor draft, instead of civil defense and disaster relief, people suffer. From Kansas: The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that…

By way of ScienceBlogling John Lynch, I read that George Gilder calls biologists "Darwinian stormtroopers." In the same NY Times article, John West claims (italics mine): The [Darwinian] technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from "ordinary citizens and their elected representatives" so…